Working Class Heroes

Maria L. Svart is the National Director of Democratic Socialists of America, the largest socialist organization in the United States. She has been National Director since June 2011. Maria Svart had been a member of DSA since 2004. She first joined as a member of the University of Chicago Young Democratic Socialists chapter and quickly became active at the national level, serving as the feminist issues coordinator on the YDS Coordinating Committee and then co-chair for several terms. Her campus activism, through YDS and other student organizations, focused on feminist, environmental, immigrant rights, anti-war and labor solidarity work.

Karen Nussbaum, the founding director of Working America and the Working America Education Fund, has been fighting for the rights of working people for more than four decades. She was a founder and director of 9to5, the National Association of Working Women and president of District 925, SEIU. Karen served as the director of the U.S. Department of Labor Women’s Bureau during the first Clinton Administration, the highest seat in the federal government devoted to women’s issues. Prior to taking on the leadership of Working America, Karen served as a special assistant to AFL-CIO President John Sweeney. She is the author, with Sweeney, of the book Solutions for the New Workforce, and with Ellen Cassedy, of the book 9to5.